Qualcomm accused of pumping up benchmark results for its new Snapdragon chips
Qualcomm is being accused of cheating on the benchmark performances of its new Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors made for laptops. Yes, this is a little out of our jurisdiction, but we thought that you would be interested in the topic of benchmark cheating since it has reared its head before in the world of smartphones. These chips could rival Apple's M-series silicon in performance and could give Windows on Arm a shot in the arm.
According to SemiAccurate, Qualcomm is "cheating" on the benchmark results for the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus SoCs that the fabless chip designer is giving manufacturers and the media. SemiAccurate cites two "major" manufacturers and what it calls a "deep source at Qualcomm" in its report. One of the main issues noted is that even top manufacturers are unable to recreate Qualcomm's benchmark results. The San Diego-based company has yet to respond to requests for a comment, but we will certainly tack one on to this article if one is released.
A report citing a deep source at Qualcomm says the chip designer's benchmark results for its Snapdragon X Elite/X Plus SoCs are not legit
During last October's Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm acted a little squirrely during the briefing on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. At MWC things got worse as the company put up slides showing that the X Elite chip's CPU outperformed those from Apple, AMD, and Intel without displaying any data that would verify these claims. The benchmarks were created using a "black box" with the media not allowed to run or test anything. Qualcomm said that it would give the media time to verify this information before the chips were officially announced. That took place today and Qualcomm apparently didn't keep its word.
To make matters worse, when the manufacturers received their initial samples, performance numbers were "far sub-50%" than the figures claimed by Qualcomm. The aforementioned "deep source" at Qualcomm told SemiAccurate that the benchmarks were cheats and that Qualcomm was aware of it. Laptops using the new chips will launch in June and Qualcomm will still not allow independent tests of the hardware.
If you're a long-time PhoneArena reader, you might recall that back in 2014 both HTC and Samsung admitted that their phones, including the HTC One (M8), artificially pumped up benchmark scores. Samsung said at the time, "Samsung Galaxy Note 3 maximizes its CPU/GPU frequencies when running features that demand substantial performance."
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